I make a yearly pilgrimage to Searsport Maine to visit their show room every summer. If you get a chance, that particular part of Maine is grand and amazing.
With my preponderance of love for BJ models in mind I set to building this model. Unlike most BJ kits, this model has a resin hull in lieu of a wood one. The kit as I got it included all the paint and even the corner runners to build a display case (minus the glass of course). The base was stained and glossed, and I put in the inlay into the pre mitered channel. The effect was a very nice wood base.
I did not use the brass corners or even use glass. I instead opted for U/V protected lexan I got wholesale as scrap from a local plastic dealer.
The scale on this boat comes out to 1/192 scale (1/16" to 1" scale), which is pretty big if this were a destroyer or cargo ship. It is a little small for a boat of this size, but it comes out as a very tall kit anyway.
As the ship came together I liked it more and more. The directions needed to be looked at several times and reread more than a few times. If you are generation Y or newer, and never read a road map before, you might have some problems. Some of the lines use an almost Morse code type identifiers (dashes and dots) for the rigging as listed on the plans. My advice is if your confused, don't force it. Go to bed and sleep on it. When you come back it will make sense!
I can't give the kit a full five star rating. It had several flaws that could have been fixed fairly easily. First and foremost, the dinghy provided for the kit is ridiculously oversized. Even to the point of being out of scale. I opted not to put the dinghy on at all. Secondly there were no blocks or tackles to put onto the back stays since they connect to adjustable running rigging on the aft of the vessel. There are other mostly minor issues that show up in the plans but not in the instructions. Despite all of this I really enjoyed building the kit. It turned out very sharp, especially the laser etched deck and the use of pin-striping for the boot topping which came out very nice.
Tragically or by design, this kit is no longer sold in Bluejacket's catalogue. If you want a bigger version of this or any of the other J-Class racers, I heartily recommend Amati's 1/96 ish version of these kits. I further recommend the vessel Shamrock, as it had a very garish green paint scheme which is a real eye-catcher!
Thanks for looking, and please go patronize bluejacket ship models online.
I will be building several more of these coming up in the next year!
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